Is Akira good for beginners?

I know that I'm replying years super late, but now that VF5US is out, I decided to use him as my main character. I play other VFS too, but I wouldn't consider myself great at that time. Maybe now somewhere around intermediate but definitely in a better place with where I am as a player. I thought maybe I could give my 1st personal experiences maybe help shed some light on him if people were really interested in playing with him. As someone who's played other games & understands how much time & care that you have to put into him, I wouldn't label him beginner friendly. This is mainly because he's not really a string heavy character like other VF characters, but people can get into him including beginners. I decided to use him because I love his gameplay & find him fun to play.

I think the convolution of his character complexity comes from feeling the need to (immediately) aim high for his moves that take a lot more execution like his 1 frame K+G for instance. I still haven't gotten this down completely, but I got it a few times. It's not easy, but this honestly shouldn't be the focal point of learning him as a character. This is where I feel a lot of people who are new make the mistake of doing. I would say his scenario is sort of like maybe a Mishima from Tekken since the majority of people put major focus on their wave dashing, electrics, or a Nina Williams where you have to learn WS+1+2 combos, Mist, & SS+1 attacks. I definitely don't want to compare or necessarily throw him in that category with Tekken since it's a completely different game. I'm basically just trying to make the point of folks feeling really needy about certain moves just to make themselves feel like they can play the characters that take more execution.

Akira can actually be learned, but the problem with a lot of players are that they would pick him up at 1st glance & then look at him as a stiff character because he thrives off of mainly hard single strikes to play his game. Then they hear about the palm & then the launcher, they feel like it's too much, but then when they play him against other characters & they feel overwhelmed. Like his 6P tools, 2P, 6P+K+G. Things like that that you need to get his game going. The focus shouldn't be about any of those things at all in my humble opinion. Just learn as you go & start with the basic gameplan. Learn the hard stuff later on & don't get caught up in practicing it 95% of the time in the lab starting out or you'll hinder your training &/or derail your impression about him & scare you off. You basically stagnate yourself before you even get started. There's no time stamp on when you should learn it.

 

I learned akira because of the hype, I failed miserably many times before going positive (all in quest mode)

 

The power of the elbow!